Customer communications should feel as easy and natural as the ones you have with friends and family. That’s why conversational customer experience matters.
Effective customer communication helps businesses better connect with customers, making them feel more valued, informed and in control. However, communication has changed. From social media to WhatsApp and SMS, messaging is now a necessary part of everyday life and more people are demanding convenience and personalisation when it comes to customer service. With today’s social transformation and rise in customer expectations, businesses need to keep up and look for ways to innovate their customer experience (CX) strategy using conversational marketing as a new approach.
What is a conversational marketing?
Conversational marketing is keeping customers and their needs at the centre of the conversation. It’s about making the customer experience from start to finish, easy and natural. It’s about engaging with customers through intuitive and highly personalised conversations throughout their buying journey.
This two-way chat is an example of conversational messaging, a one-to-one conversation between a business and a customer that can happen on any messaging platform. It differs from traditional customer communication channels such as email and SMS, because with conversational messaging, customers have the ability to reply.
When businesses decide to use conversational marketing, via WhatsApp Business Platform for example, they are able to create stronger and lasting relationships with their customers, naturally leading to an increase in trust and sales.
How does conversational marketing work?
Boosting your customer engagement
66% of consumers now prefer to have two-way conversations with businesses through messaging apps. With conversational marketing, you empower your business to help your customers in a way that sets you apart from the rest of the competition. Businesses and consumers can engage with text messages, photos, voice memos, buttons, carousel images and plenty more, creating a richer, personalised buying journey.
This engaging, interactive experience can help capture your customers’ attention, boost engagement metrics, drive purchasing decisions, and more. Ensuring every customer interaction is engaging, every touchpoint is relevant, and every experience is personalised, will help you build trust with your customers, and improve your overall customer experience, leaving your customers satisfied.
Creating a personalised experience
Although 93% of marketers think they are ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ at delivering personalised experiences, just 32% of consumers actually agree. This means that it’s crucial to know your target audience and understand their needs. In order to do this you should periodically use SMS surveys to gather feedback and run surveys. It’s essential to gather as much information as possible about your customers, analyse the data and use those data to create bespoke customer communications.
Moreover, through conversational marketing, you can create highly personalised communications depending on your customers’ replies.
Another benefit of using conversational platforms, such as WhatsApp Business Platform, is that chat history can be saved, so agents can see previous conversations to help inform their next message. Along with this, your messaging platform and your CRM system can integrate, so agents can use information such as purchase history or browsing history to tailor recommendations.
As a result, your business can deliver a truly personalised customer experience.
Convenience and efficiency
These days, consumers expect quick, efficient customer service. When you offer conversational marketing via messaging, your customers can reach you on a platform they’re already using.
Gone are the days where customers are on-hold for an eternity waiting for an answer to their question. Customers can now simply start a conversation with a company on an app such as WhatsApp and receive a quick response.
And if the message was sent out of open hours, the customer will see their message has been ‘delivered’, knowing their message hasn’t got lost in cyberspace!
Conversational messaging also allows for asynchronous communication so both customers and agents can converse at their own pace. Customers don’t have to start a new conversation every time they reach out – message history is saved even if they close the chat window. This is convenient and boosts user experience for both customers and agents.
Want to learn more about customer communication strategies?
Using conversational marketing is key to happier customers, which in turn will help boost sales and profits. It’s the future of customer communications and businesses need to take advantage. In this blog, we’re just touching the surface when it comes to the benefits.
If you’re keen to learn more, then click below to download the ultimate guide to conversational messaging, where we cover conversational CX in much more detail.
Laura Haynes
Hey I'm Laura, UK&I Marketing Manager at Esendex 👋 I enjoy developing and implementing marketing strategies and campaign experiences that create brand awareness and drive revenue by winning, growing and retaining engaged customers.
